“Tana, I’ve done emergency medical training for work. If the kid shows any signs at all that something’s wrong, trust me, I’ll call 911 and wake you up. Pawpaw’s not a newby with babies, and remember what Hart was like as a kid—we’ve got this.”
He had a point.
“Okay, but don’t let me sleep for more than two hours.”
Lifting a hand, he backed out the bedroom, leaving me with a puppy who was watching me with his head tilted to the side.
“Okay, boy… Wait, you are a boy, aren’t you?”
“He’s got a weenis and balls still,” Pawpaw yelled through the door. “He’s too little to get neutered, so it’s all there and accounted for.”
I shuddered. “Did you have to be so graphic? A ‘yes’ would have been sufficient.”
There was a pause, and then he yelled, “Yes.”
Rubbing my face with both hands, I groaned. “Okay, Wrecker. I’m going for a nap. If you need a poop or a tinkle, just—” I broke off when he launched himself onto the bed and curled up with a moan. “By all means, make yourself at home, but if you shit, piss, or puke on my bed, it’ll be the last time you’re in here.”
Looking up at me with puppy eyes, he waited for me to get into bed and then shuffled closer so that he was curled up against my back. It felt good, really good, even if it was just a dog cuddling me.
FIVE
REMY
I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep before my brain decided it was done, and I had to get up. Checking the time on my phone, I frowned when I saw a text message from a government department I was doing some work for. Opening the app with the encrypted messages on it, I read through it and was relieved when it was a relatively quick thing they needed done.
My dad had been what you could call a data analyst if you were being diplomatic. If you were being honest, he was a hacker, an intelligence finder, and everything in between. I’d learned my skills from him, but whereas he’d worked for the government, I took on odd jobs for them and other organizations linked to them around the world.
The one who’d messaged me had hired me for a particular hack for information from a government overseas, one that was considerably hostile toward the US. It wasn’t that issue that’d made me do it, it was the fact they were well known for abusing the human rights of the people in countries around theirs that’d made it a no-brainer to take the job.
Given what I’d found during a preliminary search, proof of inhumane camps and the treatment of ‘refugees’ that went against every single moral in the modern world… Yeah, I’d been okay with taking it on after that. And now they wanted me to dig deeper after they’d read a file I’d sent them a couple of days ago.
Tana had Toby, so I didn’t have to worry about him as I went to get my laptop out of the underfloor safe in the guest bedroom downstairs. Once I had it, I stopped to get some coffee and then made myself comfortable on the couch. With no distractions, I could probably have the information they asked for within an hour. After that, I’d do a quick check around the ranch and then head to Tana’s house.
Increasing the size of the text on the screen of my laptop so I could read it with my swollen eyes and blurry vision, I lost myself in the work, even finding a little bonus for the government to read. I hadn’t ever learned to hack and code officially, Dad had taught me everything I knew, but that didn’t hold me back.
I also didn’t rely on basic VPNs to confuse anyone who might see me sifting through their information about where I was located. My footprint pinged all over the world and would eventually end up in Antarctica. Now that little present had been from the government, along with the laptop I was using for all my work.
Once I was done, I had a quick shower and then put a cap on to protect my eyes from the sun. The ice pack had helped with the swelling, so I wasn’t stumbling around anymore.
In theory, the cap was a good idea, but when I opened the door my head couldn’t take it, so I picked up my sunglasses from the table next to the door and put them on as well.
I hadn’t been kidding when I’d told Tana I was experienced with hits to the nose. I’d been on the same basketball team in high school as Marcus and Jackson Townsend-Rossi, and I’d grown up with the whole family. With there being six boys, they didn’t hold back when it came to games or arguments. Basketballs to the face—accidentally and on purpose—were a well-known occurrence with them, as were weird and random accidents most people would scoff at.